Fragment of a shawabty of King Taharqa

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This is a legs and feet fragment of a shawabty of King Taharqa. The object was broken in two pieces and is not mended. There are two full and six partial horizontal lines of unframed, incised text on the front of the figure. When complete, shawabtys of King Taharqa have nine or ten horizontal...

This is a legs and feet fragment of a shawabty of King Taharqa. The object was broken in two pieces and is not mended. There are two full and six partial horizontal lines of unframed, incised text on the front of the figure. When complete, shawabtys of King Taharqa have nine or ten horizontal lines of unframed, incised text on the front of the figure. This mummiform shape does not have a back pillar or base. There is a chip missing from the right side of the foot.
The ancient Nubians included shawabtys in their tombs only in the Napatan Period, about 750–270 B.C. These funerary figurines are based on Egyptian shawabtys, but differ from them in many features of their iconography. For instance, the known Nubian examples are only from royal tombs. Also, they have unique texts, implements, poses and are known to have the largest number of shawabtys included in one tomb. Their function, it is assumed, was the same as that of the Egyptian shawabty, namely to magically animate in the Afterlife in order to act as a proxy for the deceased when called upon to tend to field labor or other tasks. This expressed purpose was sometimes written on the shawabty itself in the form of a "Shawabty Spell," of which versions of various lengths are known. Shorter shawabty inscriptions could also just identify the deceased by name and, when applicable, title(s). However, many shawabtys carry no text at all. The ideal number of such figurines to include in a tomb or burial seems to have varied during different time periods.

Provenance

From Nubia (Sudan), Nuri, Pyramid 1 (tomb of Taharqa). 1917: excavated by the Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition; assigned to the MFA in the division of finds by the government of the Sudan.